Hearts and spirits show up in person
David Lorenzo has a great post about the power of face to face meetings. I wholly agree with his assessment that passion is best expressed in person.
I’m all about email and IM and, when I must, the phone. For several months (until yesterday, actually) I even had a polycom unit set up on the corner of my desk so that I could do video conference calls with staff in another state. But all of this somehow leaves a critical dimension of humanness unexamined.
Face to face meetings are inefficient, for many tasks, when compared to all the other alternative forms of communication. But until we get holograms with smell-o-vision it’s still the best way to understand a person’s heart/passion/soul/spirit/energy/chi/vibe/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Videoconferencing gets across the voice and the image, but it dulls the ability to see someone’s small facial expressions, the moods expressed by their eyes, the way their hands shake (or don’t). All the little telltale signs that we all use every day, knowingly or unknowingly, to determine how we’ll best relate to this person at that moment.
I wholeheartedly agree Bren!
Face to face is crucial the moment a situation gets tense when using the phone, email, IM or even video conferencing. While this may not be possible in some situations where people collaborate over distance, it has become mandatory for me in my local setting.
The moment I sense conflict brewing in my workplace, I put down the phone, step away from the computer and go see the person.
Thanks for the reminder in this post, Bren.